Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:31:59 -0700
From: Michael Pugliese <debsian-AT-pacbell.net>
Subject: AUT: Re:Re: Argentine take on Hardt-Negri


The Working Truth N° 76  5/01/01

http://translate.google.com/translate_c?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.pts.org.ar/
lvo/lvo76/lvo76eeuu.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3DJuan%2BChingo%2Band%2BGustavo%2BD
unga%250D%250A%2B%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dgooglet
The URL won't parse, cut and paste or type in the authors names on google...
M.P.

The INTERNATIONAL


The myth of the "uninterrupted growth" finishes

North American

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

By Juan Chingo
with the collaboration of Gustavo Dunga


And l growth of the North American economy, that from February of year 2000
had reached the longest expansion of its history, is arriving at their aim.
This record, within the framework of the weakness of the world-wide economy
throughout the last decade, gave foot to the myth of the "uninterrupted
growth" of the North American model. Its success was praised by all the
economists and politicians of the world who prescribed their formulas
universally: deregulation, privatization, labor relaxation and dismantling
of the social security. Eliminated the "Asian model" with the crisis of the
97/98, the new North American paradigm was reinforced as "pony of battle" of
thus the call "globalización". This, next to the military supremacy and the
political leadership of the U.S.A., was one of the stabilizing and more
reactionary factors of the international situation in the last decade.

The deceleration of the North American economy, the more and more probable
risk of a recession, gives by earth with this last myth that sustained the
neoliberal offensive, that in the last years already had entered decay.
Still more, the North American crisis would be indicating the aim of their
roll like motor of the world-wide economy. This debilitates the cipayos
governments who, like the one of Of the Rúa, fulfill without chistar the
orders of the IMF potentially Fortifies the perception of the force of the
movement shift that, helped by the colaboracionista roll of the reformist
and bureaucratic directions, saw the relative strength of the U.S.A. like
something unbeatable. Of there the importance of this event, which it can
radicalize the resistance to the bourgeois offensive that in the last year
has stuck a jump with the cuestionamiento to the "imperialistic Pax" in the
middle East, the big wave of fights that Latin America crosses, from the
rises farmers in Ecuador and Bolivia to the general cuts of route and
unemployments in our country and, in the central countries, the development
of the anticapitalist movement that arose in Seattle.

The brutal fall of the Nasdaq (index of the technological actions) the
second day of the year, after finishing to the 2000 with the worse result of
all its history falling a 38% of its value throughout the year, along with
the drastic and sudden decision of the Federal Reserve (FED, Central bank of
the U.S.A..) to reduce the interest rates a 0.5%, they show that the health
of the North American economy has been deteriorated steeply. In both last
months, while the North Americans waited the resolution of the opened
political crisis with the elections of the 7 of November, apparent the
unbeatable optimism that surrounded to the economy had been replaced by a
mixture of fear and pesimism. This has decelerated, happening of a growth of
the GIP of in the last quarterly 7.3% of 1999 (highest of last the 15 years)
to a 5.6% in the second trimester of the 2000, and falling to a 2.2% in the
third trimester of this same year. The change has been abrupt. Nowadays its
fall is not discussed, which already is a reality, but its depth. Most of
the economists they say that the probabilities still incline in favor of a
"smooth landing". Nevertheless, they recognize that the greater economy of
the world now seems to be more vulnerable to a recession that at any other
moment, since its longer cycle of growth began ten years ago.

The desperate decision of the FED - that took part in surprise form like at
the worse moment of the Asian crisis of the 97/98 when default Russian
threatened the American prosperity would seem to show its preoccupation on
that the economy would be directing towards this second perspective. Its
rapidity to act sample that Alan Greenspan, his president, will do all the
possible one, lowering the price of the cost of the credit by means of the
loss of the interest rate to avoid that the recession becomes a reality. In
the same sense, the elect president, Bush - that congratulated to Greenspan
by its decision accelerated its plans: to obtain a tax reduction.
Nevertheless, these "anticyclical" mechanisms that, as opposed to the
tremors of the Asian


----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Proyect" <lnp3-AT-panix.com>
To: <marxism-AT-lists.panix.com>
Cc: <SOCIALIST-REGISTER-AT-yorku.ca>; <wsn-AT-csf.colorado.edu>;
<bilio-AT-ciudad.com.ar>; <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>;
<generation_online-AT-yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2001 10:02 AM
Subject: AUT: Argentine take on Hardt-Negri


> I just received a lengthy article from an Argentine comrade that answers
> Hardt and Negri, along with Arrighi. It is too long to forward to email
> lists, but I have put it on my website at:
> http://www.marxmail.org/arrighi_hardt.htm
>
> Here is a brief excerpt:
>
> -----
>
> Estrategia Internacional Abril 2001
>
> Empire or Imperialism? A debate with Giovanni Arrighi's "Long Twentieth
> Century" Michael Hardt's and Toni Negri's "Empire"
>
> By Juan Chingo and Gustavo Dunga
>
> The downplaying of the structural contradictions inherent in the
capitalist
> mode of production and the overestimation of the subject are manifested in
> the new theoretical scheme proposed by Negri and Hardt to define the
> "Empire" as a new phase of capitalism that leaves imperialism behind.
> Breaking up the dialectic unity between the relationships of production
and
> the class struggle, they attempt a recreation of materialism that is
> vitiated by the hypertrophy of the subject, a subjectivists theory where
> the structure holds no barriers, it does not constraint the human agency,
> even more, the former is a mere consequence of his action.
>
> This can be clearly seen when the Italian philosopher and his literary co
> thinker claim that: "Theories of the passages to and beyond imperialism
> that privilege the pure critique of the dynamics of capital risk
> undervaluing the power of the real efficient motor that drives capitalist
> development from its deepest core: the movements and struggles of the
> proletariat...History has a logic only when subjecitivity rules it, only
> when (as Nietzsche says) the emergence of subjectivity reconfigures
> efficient causes and final causes in the development of history. The power
> of the proletariat consists precisely in this...The old analyises of
> imperialism will not be sufficient here because in the end they stop at
the
> threshold of the analysis of subjectivity and concentrate rather on the
> contradictions of capital's own developmet. We need to identify a
> theoretical schema that puts the subjectivity of the social movements of
> the proletariat at center stage in the processes of globalization and the
> constitution of global order." The emphasis between the role played by
> structural contradictions and the conscious human agency, of working out
> organic crises, has been displaced from the former to the latter
throughout
> the centuries through which the history of mankind has unfolded. In the
> epoch of proletarian revolution, the subjective factor acquires a decisive
> role. The transformation heralded by proletarian revolution constitutes
the
> most conscious step humanity has ever taken. The transition from feudalism
> to capitalism, in a certain way, is in-between (in the sense that the take
> over of the means of production comes before the seizing of political
power
> by the bourgeoisie) when compared to the downfall of the Roman Empire and
> the Russian Revolution. Nonetheless, in spite of the predominant role
> played by the subjective factor -and its most developed form: the
> organization of the masses in soviets as organs of power led by a
> revolutionary party- one cannot appraise the outcome of these
> transformations through endowing subjectivity with an absolute power as a
> change agent in the world. Such is the view the Bolsheviks had of
> themselves: "one of the historical factors, its 'conscious' factor, a very
> important but not a decisive one. We have never sinned of historical
> subjectivism. We regarded the class struggle -standing on the basis
> provided by the productive forces- as the decisive factor, not only at a
> national level but also internationally."
>
> Negri and Hardt relapse in such historical subjectivism when they claim
> that: "History has a logic only when subjecitivity rules it, only when (as
> Nietzsche says) the emergence of subjectivity reconfigures efficient
causes
> and final causes in the development of history". Their subjectivism,
> however, is of a different type to that mentioned in Trotsky's quote
> mentioned above. It is not a subjectivism relying on a revolutionary
party.
> It is neither a strand of subjectivism stemming from the revolutionary
> maturity or learning of the working class, i.e., the process of becoming a
> class for itself from a class in itself, the achievement of its political
> independence with regards to the bourgeoisie, which only can be brought
> about through the experience of the class itself and its bound with a
> revolutionary party. This is not the case with Negri and Hardt,, for whom
> the becoming of the subject does not hinge upon these achievements, but
> rather on ever-present grounds for liberation.
>
> Building on a logic of an unreal subject ("the multitude") that bears no
> correspondence at all with an empirically-set subject, they proceed to
blur
> the objective positions of the different exploited classes within the
> capitalist mode of production, the centrality of the proletariat in
> particular as the social subject of the socialist revolution. Such
> phantom-like subject built by them, omnipresent and pure potential, has no
> need for programmes, strategic and tactics, let alone a revolutionary
party
> to accomplish its historic mission.
>
> Hence, when the authors of Empire are faced with the setting of the early
> 80s and most of the 90s, when neoliberalism gained momentum and the actual
> subject is in retreat and atomized, a far cry from the "constituent
flames"
> of the 70s, their theoretical framework turns out to be completely unable
> to deal with reality. This comes to light when they explain why the U.S.
> has been able to hold on to its hegemony throughout the crisis. Thus, they
> claim that "The answer lies in large part, perhaps paradoxically, not in
> the genius of U.S. politicians or capitalists, but in the power and
> creativity of the U.S. proletariat...in terms of the paradigm of
> international capitalist command, the U.S. proletariat appears as the
> subjective figure that expressed most fully the desires and needs of
> international or multinational workers. Against the common wisdom that the
> U.S. proletariat is weak because of its low party and union representation
> with respect to Europe and elsewhere, perhaps we should see it as strong
> for precisely those reasons. Working-class power resides not in the
> representative institutions but in the antagonism and autonomy of the
> workers themselves...In order to understand the continuation of U.S.
> hegemony, then, it is not sufficient to cite the relations of force that
> U.S. capitalism wielded over the capitalists in other countries. U.S.
> hegemony was actually sustained by the antagonistic power of the U.S.
> proletariat" .
>
> This is really surprising. If there is a place where the bourgeoisie in
the
> last twenty years has been able to overcome the fetters imposed by labour
> onto accumulation, that place is the U.S. As the Reagan onslaught
unfolded,
> and later continued into the 90s, the American workers endured a massive
> retreat through a combination of defeats and the fear of the 1979-82
> recession that brought about a hike of unemployment. It led to a big loss
> of conquests, a massive wage loss, the lengthening of the working day,
> which as a whole allowed for a significant increase of the rate of
> exploitation and a recovery of corporate profits. It is these factors that
> account for the relative strength of the U.S. in the face of its
> competitors and also lay the basis for its continued hegemony -along with
> the U.S. privileged position within the world finance system. Nonetheless,
> the analysis proposed by Negri and Hardt writes off this material reality,
> replacing it by a subjectivist approach. Thus, the objective balance of
> forces between the classes is replaced by the "desires" of the workers. As
> to the trade union and political level, it is true that the union and
> political representatives of the European workers is a reformist one or
has
> been bought off by the bourgeoisie.
>
> But celebrating the weakness of the trade union organization and the lack
> of any class representation in the American bipartisan system as proof of
> strength is nonsensical. The low level of organization of the American
> working class is the result of a fierce opposition of the American
> bourgeoisie to giving the slightest right of organization to the workers
on
> one hand, and the political and conservative backwardness of the working
> class stemming from the dominant position of the U.S., on the other. As we
> see, autonomism and its ultrasubjectivist approach, whose historical
origin
> goes back to the euphoria of the struggles in the 60s and the 70s combined
> with the (justified) repulsion of many left Marxist intellectuals with
> Althusser's structuralism and anti-humanism, is totally unable to
> understand the present-day world.
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
>
>
>
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